


The Suicidal Clock Chime

by CrumblingAsh



Category: American Horror Story, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - Mental Institution, American Horror Story Fusion, Brian Banner's A+ Parenting, Bruce-Tony-Centric, Canonical Child Abuse, Cruel Betty Ross, Dark, General Ross' A+ Existence, Ghosts, Horror, Howard Stark's A+ Parenting, M/M, Multi, Murder, Non-Consensual Electroconvulsive Therapy, Rape Aftermath, Rape/Non-con Elements, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide, Temporary Character Death, Torture, sort of
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-06
Updated: 2014-09-23
Packaged: 2018-02-16 09:09:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 15,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2263944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CrumblingAsh/pseuds/CrumblingAsh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The lives of Bruce and Tony, it seems, are never happy -- but they end up together, in some way. There will always be that.</p><p>(Each chapter is a different story inspired by each season of AHS, themed: haunted house, mental asylum, witches, freakshow. Not every tag is associated with each story.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In Death

* * *

* * *

 

 

**_1972_ **

He found it in the basement.

The gun in his hand is solid, heavy – cold. Metal too thick to warm quickly to his touch. It’s long, shorter than him – a shotgun just as violent and unassuming as he is.

Curiously, Bruce slips the barrel into his mouth.

 

**1993**

_IhatethisfuckinghouseIhatethisfuckinghouseIhatethisfuckinghouse_

From the stairs, Tony watches as his mother sweeps across the floor in slow, haphazard movements, her steps impaired, the vodka bottle swinging from her fingers nearly empty. He winces as she hits the door of the basement with a hard _thud,_ though it’s reflexive – he knows she had gone it on purpose, the only way she’s capable of making her displeasure known in the drunken state she’s in.

Through concrete and wood and the _damned floor, for Christ’s sake,_ he hears his father’s low, infuriated curse at her interruption. Sees his mother’s smug, satisfied smile as she stumbles away.

Tony needs to get back to his room before his father comes upstairs. Whether his mother does it intentionally or not, he never knows (she’s always too damn drunk to tell or be told, anymore), but Howard’s fury will rain down on the first form his eyes lock on. It’s been Tony too many times; the other bruises aren’t gone yet for new ones, damn it.

_IhatethisfuckinghouseIhatethisfuckinghouseIhatethisfuckinghouse_

He thinks he sees something against the door of the guestroom as he pushes his door open (just as the basement door slams against the wall), but he blinks, and there’s nothing there.

 

**1972**

It’s only by the grace of God that his mother dies in a hospital, and not on the hard, empty floor of their house.

She manages to hold on that long.

Bruce is numb as he stares at her unmoving form, laid out on the gurney they had rolled her in on. Her eyes are wide, focused and unseeing; not blinking. They should be aimed at the ceiling, but her left eye is a little lazy, drifting more toward him as the other eye stares straight on – that same side of her head is dented in grotesquely, concaved and soft-looking. It’s clean of broken skin and blood – the major wound, the hole that had emptied her life at the base of their stairs, is in the back of her head, large and hollow(now).

Her skin is blue, her fingers no longer bend easily within his. Outside, doctors and nurses are whispering, about him, about his father, about the _deadwomanonthetable_ that they think slipped and fell down the stairs(unfortunate).

He tries to swallow and chokes on the dryness.

“Mama.”

 

**1993**

Tony meets Bruce at 10:17 precisely, when DUM-E barks at something in the backyard that Tony is stupid enough to investigate.

DUM-E is a small, robotic dog Tony made from scraps of his mother’s old radios when he was four. The little thing can’t do much (he’s defective just like Howard tells Tony he’s defective), but it he moves easily enough, registers body heat and movement, and so he reaches Bruce before Tony does, yippy horribly annoying electronic chirps at the lanky, hunched teenager leaning against the back wall of their stone fence.

“Who are you?” He says it a little more harshly than he intended (he’s homeschooled, shit, and he doesn’t interact with people not in formal wear. So sue him), but the other boy looks more startled than offended, staring at Tony as if surprised he was seen at all (which, given that he’s wearing a white t-shirt and tanned pants and not exactly hiding from the back light, is just ridiculous).

“Uh, Bruce.” The guy – Bruce – shakes his head, clearing his throat and trying again. “I’m Bruce. Banner.” He sticks out his hand in what is clearly habit.

Tony grabs it for much the same reason.

“Tony Stark,” he introduces, feels a small flip in his stomach when Bruce doesn’t seem awed by his name. “You know you’re in my backyard?”

“Yeah. Oh! Yeah. Your backyard. Sorry.” He looks honest-to-God sheepish, glasses glinting under the light as he ducks his head. “The house was empty for so long, I just … uh … got used to hanging out out here. Helps me think.” He looks back up at that, and Tony doesn’t like people, he really _doesn’t,_ but Bruce looks inches shy of adorable under his mop of brown hair and shy smile that he can’t help but shake his head.

“Nah, it’s cool, man.” DUM-E chirps again, running into Bruce’s leg in an obvious ploy for attention ( _defective)_ , and it makes the strange kid chuckle, reaching down to pet him (seriously?) “DUM-E, don’t be such a bitch,” he snaps, but the dog ignores him and Bruce keeps petting him.

“Dummy?” He inquires, laughing. Tony shrugs, and Bruce grins more. “He’s  amazing. I’ve never seen anything like him.”

“Made him myself, about twelve years ago.” The other teenager’s head jerks up again at that.

“You _made_ him?” There’s the awe that was missing before, only it’s not attached to his name, but to DUM-E. His accomplishment. His _mind._ There’s another flip in his stomach.

“Yeah. He’s not perfect, but there’s some toy manufacturer really interested in his design. My dad keeps pushing me to sell, but …”

“Dads.” Bruce intones quietly, a dark flash in his eyes that Tony almost misses. There’s a sense of understanding that passes awkwardly over them before Bruce is smiling again, picking up the robot, which wags its stubby tail in response. “Tell me about him? Dummy, I mean.”

Tony _doesn’t like people._

He opens his mouth anyway, stomach still flipping. “Okay, first off, it’s D.U.M. _hyphen_. E. It sounds more official that way-.”

They talk for hours about _fucking science_ , until the kitchen flips on and the silhouette of his father passes by the curtains, the obvious shape of a bottle traveling back and forth from his face. DUM-E whimpers almost inaudibly, and Bruce passes him into Tony’s arms with that same air of understanding.

“Better get inside,” he says softly with a quirk of his lips, stepping back as a loud clatter echoes from the kitchen, followed by his dad’s predictable cursing.

In the time Tony has turned to look toward the house and then back toward Bruce, the other boy is gone.

 

**1972**

He stumbles through the front door. It’s late, and his mother is still dead.

The tv chatters happily from the living room, the lights of the pictures like lightning.

There’s a puddle of drying blood still seeped across the floor.

He freezes against the door frame.

“Robert?” His father calls out, words slurred. “That you, boy? Clean that mess up.”

He throws up.

 

**1993**

“I’ve never actually had a friend before.”

It’s been two months since they met in the backyard. They’re in Tony’s room. His mother is sleeping off her latest alcohol indulgences and Howard is gone for the next three days for some conference or another. There’s no actual need for them to be quiet, but Bruce’s words are a near whisper, as if he’s admitting a terrible shame.

“I haven’t either, really,” he says lightly, trying to play it off. But Bruce looks so small on the black sheets of his bed, curled around DUM-E in his same white shirt and khaki pants, as if he’s unsure if he even has right to _be here,_ that he adds carefully, “I’m glad you’re mine.”

It surprises a smile right onto Bruce’s face that makes his stomach clench pleasantly.

 

**1972**

Leaves fall from the trees as his mother’s plain white coffin is lowered into the ground, the hired priest saying words Bruce doesn’t attempt to comprehend.

He stands beside his father and watches the dirt eat away at her purity, her life. Hears his father suck in a shuddering breath and wants to kill him.

Throw him to the ground, bash his head into the floor, over and over and over until all that’s left is a mash of brains and bone and what used to be (and would never again be) a face.

He stands still.

 

**1993**

Bruce tentatively brushes his hand over the bruise on Tony’s neck, sucks in a sympathetic breath as he flinches at the sensation.

“You could leave,” he suggests. “Run away from this. You’re always talking about New York.”

It’s tempting, leaving his parents, leaving this house. He’s already theoretically accepted to colleges all over the country, he’d have somewhere to go.

Bruce looks him straight in the eye, all seriousness, and somehow Tony knows that leaving would be a very, very bad idea.

It just doesn’t feel right.

So he says nothing, just shakes his head, and Bruce offers him a sad, understanding smile, and tugs on his sleeve as he leads them toward the bathroom.

“Let’s put something on them, at least.”

 

**1972**

He’s still in his suit from the funeral as he again scrubs at the blood stain on the floor.

It won’t come out. He’s been scrubbing for three days, baking soda and hot water and Crisco from the cabinet.

There’s still the faintest tint of rust-colored red on the wood.

His mother is still on the floor.

The last of the very few mourners walks out of the door with a murmured, thoughtless “sorry for your loss”. He doesn’t answer, doesn’t care.

His mother is still on the floor.

With the door open, he can perfectly hear his father’s sudden burst of loud, amused laughter. His head jerks up; he catches sight of his old man’s smiling face across the street as he slaps another mourner on the back in friendly gesture.

Laughing. He’s _laughing._

His mother had cried the entire time, from the denial on the floor when his father had walked away to her pain in the ambulance to her sorrow as they had tried to save her life. The _entire fucking time._

And Brian Banner, mere hours after burying her body that _he had broken,_ is **laughing.**

**1993**

Tony kisses Bruce and starts apologizing even before they’re far enough apart to form words.

“Sorry, sorry.” He hadn’t meant to, doesn’t want to screw this up, scare Bruce away, be alone with only his scraps and his dog. He’s shaking, he realizes, trembling so bad the floor under the carpet is squeaking. He ties to move away, because maybe he can fix this.

But there are hands – large, gentle hands, sliding up and down his ribs in a comforting manner, foreign breaths puffing against his lips, and Bruce’s forehead against his, rolling in slow, soothing movements.

“Tony.” He sounds so sad, the sort of sad that stands on the precipice of tears. “Tony. No. You’re okay. Shh, shh.” Lips against his hair; he burrows his face into Bruce’s shoulder with a harsh gasp.

“I don’t feel lonely with you,” he admits, and it scrapes through his throat. “I feel lonely with everyone else. I hate everyone else. Why don’t I feel that with you, Bruce?”

He feels the other teen sigh and is pushed back. There’s a warring conflict across Bruce’s face, lips twitching as though he’s trying to say something that won’t come out. And then they’re kissing again, those words muffled against their lips.

He feels _safe._

 

**1972**

Bruce isn’t thinking.

There are no actual thoughts running through his head as he abandons his scrubbing to walk up to his room. His movements are calm, almost detached, as he opens the door and kneels to reach under the bed for the shotgun that’s still there.

There’s a flash of memory – the taste of the metal against his tongue, the weight of the barrel, the excitement of an end. But it quickly fades away to the swirl of calm nothing as her turns and leaves the way he came.

On the stairs he his ears hear his father’s laughter again; his mind hears his mother’s soft, anguished crying, _‘No, no. Brian, please. B-Bruce. Bruce. Don’t watch, don’t watch.’_

He steps onto the floor, polished shoe atop the gleaming stain of blood where his mother had twitched and writhed and gurgled pleas and confusion, convulsed in his arms.

The gun scrapes the floor as he lifts it, the weight settling comfortably against his shoulder as he aims the front at his father, smile still wide as he turns toward the house.

For a second, just a second, their eyes meet. Bruce doesn’t register the burst of horror on the man’s face as he pumps and squeezes the trigger.

The roar of the bullet’s escape is deafening, the force knocking him back, shoe slipping in the slick mess of cleaner as his father’s face rips apart in an explosion that leaves half a head. He doesn’t see the destroyed form of Brian Banner stumble in stunned steps, the remaining eye spinning in sourceless confusion as the body falls to its knees, spasming in twisted shivers before finally hitting to the street as a bleeding, convulsing corpse.

Bruce falls backward, the shotgun clattering the ground as his head _slams_ against the floor. There’s a burst of excruciating pain, but others are already screaming his agony for him as his back arches in shock, the action calling out a small, cooling snap.

It goes dark.

 

**1993**

The Starks are fighting.

It’s nothing new. The house on the corner of the otherwise quiet street is notorious for the wealthy, screaming socialite couple.

Howard’s drunk. Maria’s drunk. Sometimes Tony wishes he could get drunk, if only so their fighting wouldn’t bother him.

They’ve moved their anger upstairs, and so Tony is in his closet, tucked as tight as he can be into Bruce, who holds him firmly against his chest, DUM-E at their feet, silent.

“You think they would love each other, after all this time,” Tony whispers, jumping as something glass (and expensive, it’s all expensive) hits the opposite wall and screams its shatter. “Love each other, or divorce.”

“Love is a weird thing,” Bruce replies. He’s tense, but he doesn’t push away. Doesn’t get up and leave, like anyone who doesn’t _have_ to be in this situation would. He never leaves, it seems. But thinking too hard about makes Tony twitchy in panic.

“I don’t want a love like that,” he confesses. Maria’s crying now, something heartbroken and dramatic. There’s the sound of flesh-hitting-flesh; Howard has no patience for crying. “I don’t want to hurt anyone. I don’t want to be hurt.”

Bruce yanks him closer, buries his face into Tony’s hair as the screaming picks up again.

“Me either.”

 _I think I love you,_ neither of them say.

 

**1972**

Robert “Bruce” Banner murdered his father, Brian Banner in the heavily populated street outside of his home, hours after the burial of his mother, Rebecca Banner, with a single shotgun blast to the face. Brian Banner, 45, was pronounced dead on the scene, and is believed to have died almost instantly

Upon the weapon’s recoil, Bruce Banner slipped and fell, hitting his head against the floor with enough force to fracture his skull, bleeding out before help was able to arrive. Bruce Banner, 17, was pronounced dead at the scene, and is believed to have died minutes after the fall.

In light of the shocking deaths, an investigation into the death of Rebecca Banner, originally labeled an accident, has been opened.

Upon familial request, Brian Banner is to be buried in the family plot in Stamer Cemetary, Ohio. Upon court discretion, it is believed that Bruce Banner will be permitted to be buried beside his mother in the Violet-Tate Cemetery, California.

Further funeral information is unavailable at this time.

 

**1993**

Sometimes, when Tony walks through the house at night, when Bruce is gone (or sleeping. He stays over when it gets too bad, when Tony can’t sleep, or doesn’t want to), he sees shadows.

Glimpses of people, cast in some weird clichéd glow ghosts are described to have. Some are old, and tall, others short and young. It’s never more than a glimpse, gone in the blink of an eye, but…

There are rumors about this house. He’s heard them on the streets and at function dinners and even from his mother, before they moved in (though she had been laughing at the time, and on a rare sober kick, so he had been more focused on the beauty of her smile than on her words). Rumors that this house is a _murder house_ , cursed in death and sorrow for every resident since the original owners. Some say the unnatural death count is in the high fifties. Others say it is over one-hundred. One or two are lower, more precise: seventeen, seven.

All rumors agree, however: the ghost of every single victim haunts the house, trapped inside and unable to leave.

The murders, the strange deaths – those he might buy. People suck and so does life. But ghosts?

He mentions it to Bruce a few times; the rumors, what he thinks he sees. His (God) boyfriend always laughs with him, but Tony begins to notice the tight set to his eyes, and how after they talk, he doesn’t see those strange people-like flashes for a while each time.

He shakes it off, of course.

There are no such things as ghosts.

 

**1993**

Though they fell asleep together, Bruce isn’t there when Tony wakes up to the sound of his door slamming open.

But Howard is.

There’s something twisted in his father’s dark eyes that makes his chest seize. Something in the way he isn’t screaming, in the way he’s calmly standing in the doorway, as if it isn’t near three in the morning. He seems almost … contemplative. Sleep deprived. His eyes eerily focused on his son.

“…Dad?” He tries, shudders when Howard’s lips twist in a smirk.

DUM-E starts barking. It’s a full assault of high-pitched chirps and beeps that apparently rails at his father’s nerves in all the wrong ways. Because the next second, he’s aiming a _shotgun,_ aged and weathered, directly at the little robot, and fires. DUM-E explodes into pieces and there’s a hole in the floor.

_Oh my God!_

“Dad.” Howard’s looking at him again, and for some reason Tony can’t say anything else. Can’t bring himself to try to reason, or even to try and run. His father is looking at him like he’s a problem; a mark on the chalkboard that didn’t get completely removed by the erase and requires something more intense to be gone.

His legs are lead. His arms are lead. He can _feel_ his heart slamming against his chest, the seizing of his lungs as he tries to breathe. It’s like he’s frozen.

Howard lifts the gun again, gives it hard, satisfying pump, and aims it right at his chest.

“…Dad.” He says it again, but it’s not what he meant. _Bruce._ He meant to say _Bruce._ He wants Bruce. And he’s so, so stupidly glad Bruce isn’t here.

The gun fires.

It’s like slow motion. Bad editing in a romantic comedy where the two leads run toward each other to embrace and confess their undying love. Only it’s a bullet racing toward his chest to _make_ it so that he’s dying. He doesn’t look at his father as it approaches, but rather watches as the thick projectile slams right into him, punches through his skin and bone and muscles and organs, feels it punch out of his back. It doesn’t even hurt. He can’t feel anything, just an odd sense of coldness as he stares down at his chest. It looks like it’s been split open, a gaping hole where his heart is supposed to be, skin splayed back in chunks, edges burnt and bleeding. It’s a lot of blood. Does he even have that much blood? It’s all pulsating, gasping … or is he gasping?

_“Tony!”_

Bruce’s voice. Bruce is here? Bruce can’t be here, his dad has a gun. His dad has gone crazy. His dad … shot him. His dad shot him. He’ll shoot Bruce. Tony looks away from his body to tell Bruce that, and Bruce is right on top of him, eyes filled with a mixture of tears and anger, hands fluttering like he wants to put them on the wound, only the wound is too big, too deep. To real(that makes no sense). Tony shakes his head(tries), opens his mouth, and pours out blood instead of words. It makes him frown(Bruce?), confused.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Bruce is chanting. He presses a quick, firm kiss to Tony’s lips(that’s nice) that he can barely feel. “Don’t worry. I won’t let them. I won’t let them do it here, Tony. You’ll never see them again, I swear. Baby, I swear.” And Tony tries to smile.

Of course he won’t see them again.

He’s dying.

It goes black, Bruce’s face fading away.

 

 

**1993**

It’s like waking up from sleep.

Only he hadn’t gone to sleep.

And there’s a hole in chest, admittedly not as grotesque as before, the chunks flattened down to scarred pieces, but still there.

Tony remembers _everything._

Bruce is standing over him, defeated and sad.

“Please tell me he didn’t kill you, too!” He pushes up, still on the bed, still wrapped in his blankets, still wet with blood that he’s no longer seeping. Bruce shakes his head, however, helps him sit up – his hands are burning to the touch.

“Your dad didn’t kill me, Tony,” he says softly, brushing his fingers across his face. They’re so _warm_ , warmer than he can remember them being. “He didn’t kill your mom. He didn’t even kill himself. You.” He swallowed thickly, tears swimming in his eyes. “He only killed you.”

“He killed me.” It sounds so final. Blunt. Factual. He’s dead, just like that. “Bruce, I didn’t even … feel anything.”

“It’s kinda like that, I think,” the other acknowledged slowly. “You’re too busy dying to feel it, that main hit. You were …,” he cringes, “fortunate.”

“Yeah. Fortunate.” Tony blinks again. The room looks the same, the clock says 6:36AM. It’s only been three hours? “How come I’m still here? Aren’t you supposed to go to Heaven or Hell or purgatory or whatever?”

Another cringe, and flash of guilt. “Normally. I think. Maybe. I haven’t actually talked to anyone who had that choice-.”

“Wait!” Tony’s eyes narrowed. “Wait. You said he didn’t kill you. You said … you said … _how are we talking if you’re not dead?”_

Bruce took a deep breath, pinching the bridge of his nose the way he did when they would debate. “Tony. I am dead. I’ve just been dead for twenty-one years.”

And then words just spill out. For all that Bruce has always been silent, it’s as if the revelation were a dam removed. Bruce tells everything, from his own life to his own death, waking up as Tony had woken, the others he had met, the few who had followed, Tony’s own arrival. Threatening the others away when their curiosity of the Starks made them visible. How they can’t leave.

“It’s the house,” he says lowly. He’s against the wall, as far from Tony as he can get while still staying in the room, arms wrapped around himself, back to taking up as little space as possible. Tony has no heart to clench anymore, but he feels it anyway. “There’s something in it, something … evil. Satanic, maybe. A curse. I’ve watched it drive people to strange places before, make them lusty, or make them violent, no actual cause. It wants to trap them here, break them and keep them. That’s the point, I think.” He shakes his head. “You were so nonchalant about your parents’ anger with each other, that I stupidly figured it was normal. I thought maybe the house wasn’t interested in your family, didn’t want to keep you around. It was just waiting for me to stop watching. I didn’t notice the change in your father until it was too late.

“That was my gun,” he adds quietly. “I found it in the basement in 1972. I used it to blow my father’s head off. And your father used it to take your heart.”

His face scrunches in pain. This time Tony’s the one who swallows heavily.

“Where is he? Them? My parents?”

“I got them out. Dragged them to the edge of the yard and threw them into the street. I thought … I thought your dad was going to do it all. Kill your mom and then himself. It’s the attempted pattern. I didn’t want that for you, living with them for eternity.” _Eternity._ “But it was like being away from the house woke them up. Your mom started screaming; somehow she knew. Your dad just kinda … stood there. They didn’t come back in. I… I think they might’ve gone to the police. Maybe. No one’s showed up yet, though.”

“…Bruce.”

“You can’t leave here, now. Like me. Like the rest of us. You can’t leave the property. If you step into the street, you’ll end up in the kitchen. If you hop the fence, you’ll end up in the bathroom. You can’t leave. You can’t even die anymore.” He shivers. _Hard._ “I’m **sorry.”**

**1993**

Howard Stark is in prison for the murder of his sixteen-year-old son, which he had confessed and plead guilty to without any prompting.

Tony stands on the opposite side of the room as the police come to examine the scene and remove his body and hears it all. It’s weird, watching it. Seeing strangers in uniform shaken by his death, shedding a tear just because of how he died when they hadn’t even known him.

Weird, and oddly nice.

Bruce is at the front doorway, watching the officers come and go, stepping back farther only when they carry his body down on a stretcher, covered only in a white sheet stained red. It looks hard for him, Tony notes as he slowly saunters down the stairs after his body. There are people out on the street taking pictures. That’s also weird.

Hell, this should actually be weirder than it is. It should actually be really fucking terrifying. He’s _dead_. There is _nothing_ after this. Every day will be the same of every day before and every day after. Stuck inside of a house he fucking hates, apparently sharing it with other lucky people(ghosts? Fuck, does he have to believe in those now?), for the _rest of forever._

It should be horrifying.

But the last officer closes the door behind her, and Bruce is on the inside, staring out window and watching his body disappear in a silent ambulance. Which, cute, but Tony is still kinda-

“Right here, big guy.”

The older(way older, apparently) teenager whirls around at his announcement, looking  a cross between hopeful and wary, which would be insulting if Tony didn’t suddenly get it.

“So I’m thinking, and this is rhetorical, mind, since I don’t technically have a _choice_ , but I’m thinking so humor me, that I might hang around for a while. With you. And by a while I guess I mean eternity, since that’s a thing. Waddaya think?”

“Tony,” Bruce says slowly, as if he’s stupid(which, hello, rude), “Tony, you just died. You’ve been dead for less than forty-eight hours. You should be taking this time to freak out. Freak out, scream, throw things around, break th-.”

“I found out my best friend-slash-boyfriend is a ghost who’s been dead for twenty-one years, that I’ve been living in a house _full_ of ghosts for the past seven months, and that my father, who already didn’t like me, was possessed into hating me enough to _kill me_ by _shooting me in the chest._ And the I watched my body get wheeled away without me in it. So no. What I need right now, really need? I need you to maybe take me upstairs to the closet and just hold me for a while, because you’re all I have left right now. Okay?”

And then Bruce is holding him the way he always holds him, strong and protective against his chest. He’s so much warmer now, and it feels amazing; Tony melts against his solid form and just stays there. Because while he may not need to break anything, and while it’s not horrifying, it’s still a lot. He inhales Bruce’s spicy sent, squeaks when the older teen lifts him up and carries him up the stairs.

“Also, I’m thinking I need to make something to fill this hole. Because it’s gross. I don’t like gross. Something … bright. Shiny. Oh! Like a Lite-Brite! That’ll be awesome. And then I’ll look cool when you introduce me to all your little ghost friends.

“You already look cool, Tony,” Bruce argues, fond. “And we prefer the term “spirits”, actually. Less frightening.”

“Fuck that! I’m going to be a ghost. I don’t even care. Do you know how long I _wanted_ to be a ghost?”

 

* * *

 

 

**1994**

There are scraps everywhere in the house; sometimes some of the other spirits(ghosts) will bring him some, kind and thoughtful and caring, so that he can build whatever he wants.

Tony can’t build another DUM-E, though. It’s impossible to screw up a code intentionally to recreate the robot.

It’s Bruce who finds the puppies, three little Pitbulls, 10 weeks and unwanted, left to(successfully) starve to death when they hadn’t been sold.

They’re all skinny, nothing but bones and skin, eternally puppies and all the more stupid for it. Tony can’t replace DUM-E, but he can look at the newly-dubbed Dummy falling over in Bruce’s lap and laugh while letting Butterfingers and You nibble on his fingers.

It takes weeks to train them to _not_ be fascinated by the light protruding from his chest.

 

**1995**

Though he’s forever stuck at sixteen, he and Bruce celebrate his eighteenth birthday the way Tony had hoped to while still alive.

As in Bruce pinning his front to the wall of his old bedroom and fucking him hard enough to scream. Over and over and over again.

Ghost sex is the best sex.

 

**1998**

When a new family moves in, Tony is so infuriated by the sight of the little girl’s pink Poo-Chi that the entire house rumbles under his irritation.

The puppies howl, light fixtures fall, and Bruce cannot manage to calm him down fast enough for the family to not move out.

(which may have actually been a good thing)

 

* * *

 

 

**September 12, 2001**

The house is empty, and the world has been quiet for the past twenty-four hours.

Bruce has heard over the fence from the louder, mourning neighbors about the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, and has never been happier that Tony never took him on his suggestion to run.

Still, today the house is empty, and has been empty for the past four months (Tony’s temper about new technological advances that so clearly rip of his childhood ideas is more damaging than the rage of the demonic spirits they keep suppressed in the basement), so when he hears the front door creak open, he’s curious enough to actually pull himself from Tony’s slumbering form to check it out, chuckling softly when Dummy follows him.

“Clint, hurry up!”

It’s a female voice he hears, young and trembling in overwhelming emotion, and obviously not one of theirs. Interest growing, he scoops the puppy up (ghost-puppy and living-human interaction never ends well) and moves more quickly down the stairs, stopping short at the sight of a boy and girl close to his own physical age slipping into the house, closing the door softly behind them.

“Is this really where he used to live?” Where the girl’s voice was emotional, the boy’s voice is flat, near monotone. The girl, all red hair and sharp, red-rimmed eyes, exhales slowly, nodding.

“Coulson always did like them creepy.”

Coulson. Bruce knows that name.

“Where should we do it? Right here? One of the rooms?”

“Let’s try not to stain any carpet. You know how Coulson is-was, about messes.” She trips over the tense, and Bruce’s breath catches in empathy as the boy – Clint – finally sparks emotion as he approaches her.

“Natasha...”

“I just want to be near him again, Clint. I don’t want to think about the planes. About the buildings. I just want to be near him.”

“Me too.”

“Then let’s do it.”

Dummy squirms in his arms as the two carefully lay themselves out on the wooden floor of the foyer, side-by-side. Their breathing is peaceful, their postures sad, and he stops breathing when the girl pulls out a gleaming pocket knife, flicking it open with certainty.

He watches her slide it down one wrist, then the other, with a steady hand and deep stroke, the blood pouring out freely from the slit skin. The boy takes it from her easily, repeating the movements as his own forearms slice open to release their own blood. The knife is slipped carefully into his own pocket as his arms fall back down, his right hands tangling tightly with her left.

A rush of cool air alerts Bruce to Tony’s presence, as he turns his head to meet his lover’s curious gaze. Shifting Dummy in his arms, he presses a finger to his lips and nods the other forward.

Tony takes in Natasha and Clint’s slowly dying bodies, the blood forming a puddle around them, with a quiet, serious consideration Bruce rarely sees upon him. “Should we … help them?” He asks, though even as he says it, his tone is doubtful. All the same, Bruce shakes his head.

“They need this. Or … they think they do. And they need each other. Here, at least we can guarantee they’ll have that.”

They watch as the pair take their lasts breaths, bodies falling empty in death-sleep as their spirits slowly formed away from their shells.

(It will be hard for them, Clint and Natasha. They had not expected to be trapped in the house that had belonged to the man they had viewed as a father; had hoped to join him in death, or as close as they could get. For days they had both hovered between the shades of dark and light, the basement and the rest of the house. But where they were angry, and sad, and efficient, they were not violent or evil. They had stabled, having each other, not bad people. ).

 

 

**July 4, 2006**

Unlike with Clint and Natasha, they had all been expecting Steve, and by default, Bucky.

The house wasn’t theirs. It hadn’t been bought, or rented, or signed over. The revelation of the bodies of two suicidal teenagers, atop the house’s already infamous reputation, had been enough to scare buyers and potential investors off without so much as a walk-through, so in regards to privacy, the homeless Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes were completely safe from public discovery.

It was normal that the house would attack those who sought illegal entrance. Even Bruce had bristled at the duo’s bold move to take up residence. Oddly enough, it had been Tony who had kept them at bay, who had taken one good luck at the tiny, sickly Steve Rogers and had informed them all that the man was not long for the world.

Physically, the two were older than the four of them – both in their late twenties, both broken and older than their ages.

Bucky, crippled from war. Steve, crippled from life. Both poor, tossed aside, useless to society.

Steve hadn’t been long for the world, no, but his beautiful innocence and optimism had drawn the spirits to him like moths to a flame.

He had a smile that lit up the room, a brighter smile yet when Bucky would come back from whatever he had done that day to get them money, or meds. His body had been weak, but his hands had been steady, pads of paper and charcoal between his fingers, drawings so beautiful that it reminded them all of the beauty outside the walls of the house. And he had had a soft voice, gentle and kind, and when he hadn’t been talking to Bucky, he had been talking to the house, commenting on its quirks and beauty, its comfort, his own fear.

The other spirits had never dared to touch him.

Now , they draw near as Steve’s breaths grow ragged, as he clenches the sheet of the bed so tightly between his frail fingers that his entire hand goes white in effort. Natasha hovers over his head while Clint leans over her, both watching Steve’s face. Tony stands at his side, tears slowly escaping to travel down his cheeks that he angrily brushes away. Bruce stays at his feet, desperate to keep out of the way of the frantic Bucky, who is so obviously trying not to break down for Steve’s sake that it’s painful to watch. Butterfingers and You both sit on Steve’s chest, their puppy whimpers an accompaniment to his breathing. He would pull them back, only … he doesn’t think their presence is making any difference on Steve’s health, already so far gone.

 _We’ll take care of you, Steve_ , he thinks. Shares a glance with Tony, who he knows is thinking the same.

“Bucky,” Steve wheezes, opens his eyes enough for slivers of blue to peek out. Bucky is right there, grabbing Steve’s hand, shaking and trying so _hard._ “Bucky,” he says again, tries to smile. “ _Don’t follow me_.”

“I am **not leaving you,** punk,” Bucky hisses as Steve closes his eyes. A single tear slips out. “I’m with you til the end of the line, Stevie. No matter where the line fucking goes.”

“We’ll take care of you both,” Tony whispers. Natasha smooths Steve’s hair, whispering nonsense to him as Clint drops a hand on Bucky’s shoulder.

Steve dies between one breath and the next with nothing to mark the moment but a gentle hitch. His spirit sleeps peacefully outside his body, not yet ready to awake, and Bucky’s resulting howl is enough to wake the street. He plants a shaky kiss to Steve’s forehead and then jerks away, dashing toward the kitchen at an impressive speed.

Bruce tosses one final look at Tony, who nods, and follows him.

“I can help you.” It’s all he says as he enters the room, but it’s enough to startle the former soldier, who whirls around, the box of rat poison(left behind by the realtor, ha) still open in his hand.

“Who the fuck are you?” Bucky demands, wild eyed and still crying. Bruce holds up his hands peaceably.

“I’m just a friend. A very… unusual friend.” He pauses long enough to block himself from the man’s view, pops back up at his gasp with a sharp grin. “We’re going to help Steve through this. We’ll help you, too. To get there and get through it.”

“…There?” Bucky asks, and it’s weird for Bruce, Bucky being older yet younger, because now he looks younger, so very much younger(before Tony he wouldn’t have given a damn). He nods toward the poison box, smiles kindly when Bucky drops it on instinct, though his eyes widen in realization.

“I have an easier way. One that won’t hurt as bad,” Bruce offers, clearing his throat. “We … love Steve here, Bucky. And you love Steve, and Steve loves you, and so we love you, too. We’d like you to stay, and we want it to be easy for you. And easy for Steve to accept that it was easy for you.” He clears his throat again. “Please.”

Bucky shouldn’t trust him, but he does.

(In the end, Steve wakes up surrounded by Natasha and Clint and Tony and Bruce. He’s still small, still skinny, but he smiles at them radiantly through his confusion on their identities, laughs freely when You jumps up to lick his face. It’s a smile that dims in sadness when Bucky slowly enters the room, a long, bloodless cut stretching from the top of his left elbow to the tip of his middle finger the pulls open to muscle, but brightens immeasurably when Bucky ruffles his hair with a rough laugh of his own. The two are happy, Clint is grinning, Natasha has a small smile of her own. And Tony looks at Bruce, head titled in happy puzzlement, and Bruce can’t help but kiss him with a smile of his own).

 

 

**1993-2014**

It’s not always easy for Tony.

_IhatethisfuckinghouseIhatethisfuckinghouseIhatethisfuckinghouse_

Days are passed by numbers and by sunlight and not by action. He spends his time locked inside four walls that can go no higher or lower, in a courtyard not spacious enough for sentence of _forever_ , in the company of ghosts who can’t decide if they want to kill every person on the planet, or morn their short, violently-taken lives.

There’s Bruce. Thank God for Bruce. The fucking _house_ had better thank God for Bruce, because otherwise he would have brought the entire building crashing to the ground, destroying everything until whatever it is that holds them here.

(Sometimes he still thinks about doing that. Annually. He thinks about annually. Twice a year. Whatever. The temptation to slaughter the wayward ghosts of the house, because he feels he c _ould_ do that, slaughter them, never really diminishes).

But as much as he loves the brunette teenager(man? Did time work in eternity? Fuck), even Bruce can’t always be enough. Be enough to calm him. Stop his thoughts from sliding downward. Stop him from getting angry.

“I wanted to be an engineer,” he sneers at Bruce one afternoon, as they watch a bus unload school kids across the street, on the very road the Bruce had killed his father on. “I wanted to go to college, get my degree, and be a fucking engineer. Maybe even start my own company one day. Outdo Jobs and Gates and all their cheap products in place of my own. I wanted to _rule the fucking world,_ Bruce.  And instead I am **stuck in this God-forsaken house.”**

“I wanted to be a doctor,” Bruce answers back with a shrug – a tic for tac. “I wanted to do some good in the world. Or maybe be a physicist. Or some other sort of scientist. As long as I was doing something to make the world a better place for everyone. That’s what I wanted. That’s what I wanted until the day I watched my father bash my mother’s head in. Until the day he laughed after her funeral. Until the day I shot him.” He turns large, sorrowful eyes on Tony. “I will hate that you are stuck here until the end of time, Tony. I will. I should have done something to stop it, should have known the house wouldn’t let your family go. But you have to ask yourself, _really ask yourself,_ even if it hadn’t been in this house, would your father, who was already angry, already violent, have killed you anyway?

Figuring out that answer is the only thing that will keep you sane.”

Tony thinks that he doesn’t need to figure out that answer. Alcohol could be just as strong as possession when it came to Howard Stark – there had always been a chance, however small, however unthought of, that he would have killed Tony. But he already knows that, and so it doesn’t make it easier.

“I just wanted … I just wanted to make things,” he says, shoulders slumping as he sighs a breath he doesn’t need. “For the world. I wanted to give something to the world.”

“I know,” Bruce murmurs, reaches across the doorway to grab his hand, smile forever sad. “The world lost something great in your death, Tony Stark.”

His own lips quirk in mimic of Bruce’s expression. “You too, Bruce Banner.”

(It gets easier, with Natasha and Clint, easier still with Bucky and Steve(everything’s easier with Steve), but it never really goes away. Tony’s heart breaks every time he sees a new piece of technology out in the world, knowing it could have been his, knowing he could have done it better. And his heart breaks for Bruce when a resident’s television will talk about some yet uncured disease, or a third-world country on the brink of outbreak, or something about science that is so completely utterly _wrong_. And when the other ghosts, the unfriendly ones, start to get restless, start to inch forward to take a life or five to satiate their own thirst for life, he beats them back with a viciousness that surprises himself, dances that edge Natasha and Clint used to love so much).

(Those mornings or days or nights or whatever, Bruce drags Tony upstairs to his old room. Sometimes they hide in the closet, playing with Dummy and Butterfinger and You until all they can do is laugh. Other times, Bruce holds Tony down to the floor and fucks into him hard enough that all he can do is feel, thoughts gone. And still other times, Tony will be the one holding Bruce down, whispering into his ear how magnificent he is, how perfect, Tony’s only reason for going on. Sometimes, they just sit together on the bed Tony died on, silently wondering if today will be the day someone bulldozes the house down and sets them free).

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For this: Tony is sixteen. If Bruce had never found the shotgun, if someone would have removed it from the house after his death, if Howard hadn't shot him, he would have met Rhodey three days after his seventeenth birthday, and Pepper during his second semester of college. Likewise, if Bruce, seventeen, hadn't shot his father, if he had just left the hospital and kept walking, he would have eventually hitched his way to Virginia, where he would have tiredly slid into a booth at a diner right behind a curious Betty Ross. Twenty-two years apart, Tony and Bruce would have only met during Tony's sophomore year of college in Advanced Nuclear Physics, his chosen for-fun elective, taught by one Dr. Bruce Banner, husband of Betty Ross-Banner. Natasha and Clint, both 18, still would have lost Coulson in 9/11, and would have been alone in the house at the time of their deaths, and likely would have fallen over to the more violent temptations of the house's evil than on the human side. As Bucky's scream alerted neighbors to their presence in the house, Bucky (27) would have been found before dying from ingesting the poison, and would be taken to a hospital while Steve's (26) soul remained trapped, alone. Eventually Bucky would have taken his life, but not knowing about the curse, would have done so at another location, separating them forever.
> 
> If you wanted to know all that.


	2. Carnal Permission

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note the "Rape/Non-Con" warning.

* * *

 

 

**1960**

Bruce has been watching the light underneath his door. He’s seen Father Ross’ looming shadow slowly walk by twice – one for forward, one for back – heard his harsh, unforgiving voice snarl at men Bruce has tried not to remember the names of, heard his steps fade away to nothing as he finally disappeared from their existence for the night. The clock of the church miles off (so, so many miles off) has tolled three times since curfew, and he knows the fourth toll is only a few minutes away.

He’s twisted himself on his mattress so that he rests on his stomach. The backs of his thighs twinge as the cold air of the night skitters over their fresh welts, but it’s become so normal that he doesn’t even register the twitching of the skin between the cuts as it tries to pull itself together. Doesn’t even clench his teeth to hiss a breath of pain.

When the faint sounds of the church bell tolling midnight in the distance begin to reach his ears, his eyes move from the light under his door to the handle itself. He won’t see her coming, he never has. But he hears the clanking jingle of keys, the pop of his lock, and immediately focuses on the pale face of the robed woman that slips from the light and into the room that has become his.

“Bruce?” Her voice is a drop of cool water in the desert, a balm that makes his welts seize up in the horror of remembered pain. She closes the door, leaving it unlocked, and he can see the shimmering of her dark blue eyes as they focus on him, wide and uncertain.

“Sister Betty,” he acknowledges softly, not moving as she approaches him, not covering despite being unclothed. Sitting up, standing, any movement at all – those can all be viewed as defiant, threatening. Defiance is not something tolerated at the Triskelion Mental Institution, and it is definitely not something tolerated by Sister Betty. So he lays there, submissive and yielding, waiting for her hand to find his skin.

“Oh, Bruce.” She’s lovely, the first time, before you get to know her, before you let her in, touching your body and soul. He remembers how his breath had caught at the sight of her when they had dragged him through the doors of the intimidating building, awed at the sight of something pure in Hell. When her fingers graze against his naked back, brush across the welts, he flinches, a minute action he knows she catches, and as usual makes her melt. “I’m sorry,” she whispers.

_You’re always sorry,_ his inner voice growls, low and rumbled. _You always do it._ “It’s alright, Sister Betty,” he answers instead, still submissive, still gentle. “It was a punishment I deserved.”

“But you’re forgiven,” Sister Betty interjects immediately, her mouth a grim line. “I wish you hadn’t made me do this to you, but you’re forgiven. And you’re still hurting.” Her fingers press pointedly onto a welt, spasming when his breath is finally forced to catch. “And I’m sorry for that. Let me make it up to you?”

It’s not a question. This is an old song that Bruce has danced with Sister Betty for the two years that he has been here, and he’s already rolling over, his cuts dragging across the cheap cotton of his sheets, his traitorous cock already beginning to harden as she, smiling is sad happiness, straddles his legs.

The dance goes many ways. Sometimes Sister Betty will rub herself against him, the fabric of her panties dragging across his cock over and over until they both cum, his seed spitting up onto her skin and the inside of her robes, her teeth locked onto the meat of his shoulder to silence the sounds of pleasure he never echoes. Other times, she will lower herself onto him, and whether those times are hard fucks or ironically tender couplings depends on how hard she’s beaten him that day. There have only been a few times where she’s turned _herself_ over, presenting her ass to  him and begging him to fuck her, _hurt her_ , as she cries – but those had been more in the beginning, before Father Ross had brought on more help, and her responsibilities had lessened.

This time, however, Sister Betty eyes him with that sad happiness as she drags her nails sharply down his chest, leaving thin red lines in their path as she shifts back a little more, grazing against his dick which twitches in awareness. Her skirt fans out over them as she positions her cunt over the top of his knee, the warm heat pulsing against the joint like heavy syrup as she bends over, her breath skirting his sensitive head. They rarely do this, either.

“I’m _sorry,”_ she says again, and then sucks him into her mouth.

Bruce doesn’t moan as he feels the buds of her tongue wrap around his cock, but his body fucking _sings_ its pleasure. He’s human, and he had loved sex, before. Sister Betty plays him like an instrument she’s knows through the intimacy of creation, her hands latched to his thighs as her head bobs over and over. There’s always something a little disturbing about the sight of a nun’s habit blocking the view of feverous cock-sucking, but he pushes it aside with everything else, and lets the warmth of sex heat his body as the woman moans quietly around his cock, the vibrations soothing. His cock hits the back of her throat and his spine arches slight enough to react, and he bites back of moan of his own as she swallows around him, sucks him in again and again to the depths of tight, wet, teasing heat.

He feels alive like this and hates himself for it, and then he feels the tendrils of anger nipping at his mind.

Bruce cums at the graze of teeth, pain erupting in his mouth as his dick jerks and pulses, balls jumping at the opportunity to empty themselves into something inviting. His mind goes temporarily, mercifully blank as the endorphins from his orgasm flood his body, all but floating.

He comes back to the feel of chill lapping at his spent cock and Sister Betty’s hands wrapped tightly around his wrists as she grinds her cunt against his knee, the bed creaking ominously. He watches her face with morbid fascination; her expression always twists more into pain than pleasure, a tear or two always falling. Her mouth is forming unspoken words as she rocks against him, like she’s pleading in prayer as she chases down her own release, and it’s uncomfortable shades into wrong that do more to chill his body than the air. He can feel the small bud of her clit through her panties, shifts his knee just enough that he’s more grazing the side he knows will set her off, watches as her mouth abandons the words to fall open instead, gaspy breaths squeaking out from her lips as her hips rush in excited speed before her entire body tenses up, locked in release that slicks against his empty skin.

Sister Betty falls against him as she always does, habit smacking against his face, curling into his chest as her body twitches, clinging to him like he’s going to save her, despite that she’s the one who plays jailer to his prisoner.

“I’m _sorry_ ,” she says again when she’s caught her breath; he’s stopped allowing himself to believe her apologies are for her visits. She brushes at his lips, her fingers tinted red with blood when they pull away – he bit them, then.

“I’m better for it, Sister Betty,” he answers as she pushes away, as he knows she wants to hear. “They will heal and I won’t forget.” Her satisfaction could be from sex or his answer. He never knows.

He watches as she adjusts her panties with embarrassed hesitancy, adjusts her robes and straightens her hat before returning to the door. She picks something up from the floor – the clothes she had taken from him earlier that day – and tosses them lightly onto the bed.

“I’ve already let them out; they’re waiting for you. Remember to be back in here by five.” She tosses him a fleeting glance before letting herself out, leaving the door unlocked.

He waits until he’s sure she’s gone – sometimes it’s too much, or too little, and she turns back for another round – before slowly pulling himself from his bed and sliding on the clothes. They hurt, catching on his injuries and sensitive cock, but he’s quick with them anyway, and slips through the door. He has less than five hours with them.

 

* * *

 

 

Natasha has been at Triskelion the longest, after him. She’s accused of slaughtering seven men in a back alley – her quiet nature and defiant nature had done nothing to help her case. Whispers from the attendants, complaints from Sister Betty, say that Natasha is emotionless, remorseless; their belief saves the woman from the lobotomy a few of the men’s families had demanded of Father Ross, but Bruce had seen her eyes when they had lead her into the common area. The fear that had flashed when he had stood over her to greet her; the way her hands had tensed. She’s calm now, the cool calculation and sharp understanding she radiates a mockery to the state’s belief in her insanity, and Bruce had known then and knows now that, while she had killed those men, they had deserved to lose their lives at the hand of her.

Clint had come after, barely older than Natasha and just as empty. They say he had burned down a circus tent with the guests and attendants still inside (the guests part is a lie – Bruce has learned that Clint abhors violence against innocent people, but the younger man admits to the attendants with the same sort of hard edge of Natasha. He spared the animals, however), yet somehow he always finds a light for a smoke. He’s silent unless agitated, at which point he turns smart-mouthed and disrespectful – they spare the rod with Clint, but they spare meals, too. He’s skin and bones under his bright eyes, always hungry for whatever they can sneak him, fresh and warm or cold and aged.

Bucky is younger, the same age as Natasha, and had been _helped_ through the doors of Triskelion with a body slumped in defeat and eyes ruined in sorrow. The man had not been admitted for violent reasons, but rather for the sinful act of sexual deviancy. Which is worse, in this place, than being insane. Those who are violent are mostly ignored, pulled aside only for punishment or the occasional effort to correct them at the urging of family or state. Those admitted for homosexuality, however – Father Ross is blissfully adamant that they can be cured. Aversion therapy. Electroshock, drugs, cold showers, ice baths, no meals, interrupted sleep, visuals of sexual violence on children by deviant men. Torture, Bruce knows, when Bucky can’t stop shaking. It’s torture.

Brother Steve is the real surprise in this new fucked up life Bruce has adopted. He had followed on the heels of Bucky, popping up one morning just behind the praise-singing Father Ross. By all rights, Brother Steven Rogers should be just another face in navy, another set of fingers to give them meds and hands to hurt them and hold them down. But Brother Steve walks the corridors and rooms of Triskelion in the white of his undershirt, a burst of unfamiliar color in their dull world. His large blue eyes are kind, his hands as soft as his voice, his personality well-tempered, and the crucifix that hangs around his neck is less ornate and smaller – more personal – than the ornament around Sister Betty’s neck. But it had been Bucky that had opened up Brother Steve as _Steve_ to Bruce, to them. The small exclamation of disbelief that had escaped the younger man’s mouth at the sight of the free man, the way Steve had gripped his hands with desperate strength – Bucky had been discovered, been sent here, and _Steve was the name he hadn’t given up._

Steve is their secret, carefully and zealously guarded. A Good Man they can trust.

When Bruce finally slips through the door of the common room that night, smelling like Sister Betty, it’s to the sight of four of his five wrapped around the curve of the back table, shuffling cards Clint no doubt hustled from an attendant. Natasha sees him first, stands and moves to greet him, stopping just shy of touching him so that she can study him silently instead.

“I’m fine,” he assures her gently, reaching out and taking her hand in exaggerated slowness, giving her time to pull away. She doesn’t, not tonight – grips his calloused fingers tightly in her small ones, because she knows what he does (they all know what he does, so that they can have this), and pulls him toward the back of the room where the others are waiting.

Clint looks tired, deprived of food, a _gain._ Natasha is tense and suspicious, _again._ Bucky is pressed into Steve’s side, expression vacant and limbs twitching, _again._

Every day is _again_ in this place.

“Deal me,” he says to Clint, who eyes him critically for a moment before grinning widely, all teeth, doing exactly that.

 

* * *

 

 

_They say you’re a monster._

_I could believe it, looking in your eyes._

* * *

 

Rage and anger flow through Bruce’s blood, and Tony Stark’s admittance to the Triskelion Mental Institution will be his greatest anguish.

“We’re getting a new patient.”

Zola is the Triskelion’s residing doctor, brought in through the outside channels Father Ross had gathered during his time before the Church. He’s intended for basic medical use – treatments for illnesses or injuries, oversight of punishments and treatments. But Zola has … _special_ interests that reach beyond what the laws and morality of humans permit, interests that are easily hidden in the dark and easily locked rooms, ignored for the sake of reputation. Special interests that fall on those that live this life alone, nameless and without care.

Obediently Bruce shifts his gaze from the blank space on the wall he had been studying to the short, stocky man, ignoring the blood that trickles down his arms, thighs, and legs to the white floor below. _Bleed out the monster, Bruce._ The doctor is grinning cheerfully at him, pulling carelessly at his cuts to keep them open.

“Oh yes, another friend for you, Mr. Banner. Much like our dear Mr. Barnes, only not quite so …”

“For your table?” Bruce drags wryly, because with this man he can, pays for the right of snark. The doctor chuckles.

“Perhaps.”

_Stark_ is not an unknown name, even to those living out their lives in a crazy house. Howard Stark is a legendary progressive, shaping the future of technology and weapons long before Bruce had even been born. So it’s nothing short of shocking to him, to anyone, to see _Anthony_ Stark escorted through a small crowd of anxious and shouting reporters, smile plastered on his, and into their prison later that morning.

“He’ll be trouble,” Steve whispers to them lowly as Stark tosses the room a jaunty wave before he’s (carefully) manhandled to the back room for introduction. The man has his arm wrapped around Bucky’s shoulders, using his free hand to help the quivering man eat the morning’s oatmeal (cold). His voice sounds a mix of exasperated and miniscule fondness, _familiar,_ but when Bruce shoots him a look, he just shakes his head, pausing in his actions as Bucky moves his hand to cautiously help with the puzzle Natasha and Clint are putting together backside-up.

Stark joins them three hours later, after Steve has (so damned slowly) left to escort Bucky to treatment.

“I prefer “Tony”, actually. Anthony is a mouthful.” He offers up when they exchange names. Dressed in a backless gown, skin still damp from his welcome-to-Hell hose-down, wrists red from restraints, he shouldn’t look like anything more than another Triskelion face. But St- _Tony_ is still nothing but smiles, rich brown eyes of shuttered ego. He’s slotted himself into Steve’s vacated spot, and to Bruce’s surprise, despite the man’s apparent exuberant nature, he doesn’t try to touch Natasha, who sits stiffly next to him – keeps his hands away from the puzzle they’re putting together. His eyes remain locked on Bruce with an intense, uncomfortable focus. “Your cuts look painful.”

“Life is painful,” he answers back automatically, blinking at the sharp grin he receives in return.

“Isn’t that the damned truth?” He murmurs, thoughtful. Bruce can feel Natasha’s eyes on him, feel the questioning bump of Clint’s foot against his just as Sister Betty stalks through the door, blowing her whistle hard in a sharp call for lunch, eyes narrowed in dangerous dare even though they’re all already standing on learned reflex. Stark’s gaze doesn’t waver. “There’re alotta faces here,” he observes. “Mind if I sit with yours?”

The man isn’t here for an insanity plea (though if Howard Stark is smart, that’s exactly what he’ll push for), which means there’s nothing innocent about him. Bruce eyes him critically, but there’s something … soft in his stance.

He’s dangerous.

But so is Bruce.

 “Sure.”

 

* * *

 

 

Therapy in Triskelion, whether for the insane or for the deviant, is a joke.

Pills are the least of it, and they come after every meal. Little red capsules that are still too fat to swallow; little red capsules that make your body numb and your eyes foggy so that it’s easier to lead you to a bed and strap you do, easier to convince you not to fight the questions and the needles and the machines. Bruce takes them when he wants to forget, soaks in the spit of his tongue and lets them slide down his throat, slow and painful.

Today he tucks it behind his back tooth, goes through the motions of pretending to take it and letting the bored attendant check before stepping out of line. The cuts on his skin pull and twinge as he makes his way to their back table where Natasha and Clint already wait. Stark scampers up behind him seconds later, pulling up the same chair and flopping into it with an exaggerated huff he hasn’t been broken of yet (Bruce is still human enough to admit that he’ll be sad to see spirit fade from his eyes with each passing wave of torture. He hates watching it, and it’s all that ever happens).

Bruce slips the pill from his mouth with practiced subtlety, drying its coated red form against his shirt before slipping it to Natasha under a puzzle piece. He sees the newcomer watching him curiously.

“It’s useless to me,” he says softly. “But some people need it to survive here.” Bucky will be in his second hour of therapy now – an ice bath, he thinks, though it’s possible it will be another slideshow. Father Ross is fond of those. He’ll come back shaking, wounded, unable to sleep, and Steve can’t risk breaking into the supplies twice in two weeks.

There’s something strange in Stark’s expression when Bruce looks back at him.

“Fuck,” the man breathes, the smile that fights his lips the most sincere thing Bruce has seen in a long time. “I was starting to wonder. Nice to meet you, Bruce Banner.”

It’s strange and Bruce doesn’t even notice, entranced by the genuine features suddenly melting the other man’s face that makes his stomach stir.

“You too, Tony.”

 

* * *

 

_You’re stuck here, and we’re stuck with you, and if we’re stuck with you, you’re going to make yourself useful._

_So hold him down._

 

* * *

 

 

“He had a session with Zola.”

The words are accusing, though the flickering light in Steve’s eyes make it clear the he’s not sure who he’s really blaming. Bruce, for his part, can only stare in numb horror as the trembling Bucky burrows so far into Steve’s side that it resonates nothing but pain, his eyes as empty as a winter’s starless night. The red pill grinds relentlessly between his front teeth, sticking out between his pale lips like blood that can’t escape. It’s their third night, safe and alone and not safe.

“Zola doesn’t handle deviant patients,” he whispers, but it’s more denial than fact, because he can _see_ Bucky, can _recognize_ the aftershocks doctor’s work wracking his friend’s body and wrecking his mind. Zola is ruthless, and as far as the world knows, Bucky has no one on the outside who would give a damn if he disappeared.

“He did this time.”

Bruce has to leave them this night, walking away from the sight of their lonely forms huddled close in the unloved room that’s filled with too many broken objects and not enough comfort. Sister Betty is asleep in her room, but Zola is wide awake in the pits of the basement, waiting for him.

“Can’t sleep, Bruce?”

The voice startles him, breath coming out in a painful punch as Tony steps out from under the stairs, grinning widely and still in the flimsy gown. He looks enticing, would look vulnerable if not for his smirk, and by the time Bruce regains control of his thoughts, he’s already altered his path to take three steps toward the man. He shakes his head hard.

“How did you get out?” He inquires, because Sister Betty doesn’t know of him yet, probably wouldn’t unlock the door if she had (there’s a reason he’s still in the gown). Tony’s smile just sharpens, head tipping down in mock consideration.

“Oops. Was that lock turned for a reason? Silly me, I thought it was a suggestion. Actually, I’m going to assume it was a suggestion, because what else could it be?”

Anger sparks up his spine, unnaturally muted as he levels the other man with a hard look. “If you get caught, you’ll ruin this for them.” The smirk drops away as if felled by a bullet, Tony’s expression instantly serious.

“I don’t get caught, Bruce.”

Bruce doesn’t respond, his tongue too heavy, too tired as he turns and leaves the man. Bucky’s breaking and he’s walking toward his destroyer, taking each step with slow precision, descending into Hell, closing his eyes to the muffled screams he begins to hear.

It’s Hell. It’s Hell, it’s Hell, it’s Hell.

_‘You’re such a good boy, Bruce.’_

“You’re late,” Zola intones kindly when he slips in the room, quick to close the door behind him. The doctor hovers over a small display of instruments, back turned to the table in the center of the room and the naked, bleeding man who is strapped on top of it. A nameless, faceless patient Bruce has seen too many times. “We’re studying pain tolerance tonight with a different method.” The man pulls up a funnel. “I want to see how full I can get his gut before he begins to scream or his organs begin to rupture. Whichever comes last.”

The patient has already been screaming.

“I’ll need your help holding him down. His hips, if you would. Holding his midsection would interfere with the results.”

His hands find the man’s bones with unrelenting firmness, and he ducks his head and squeezes his eyes at the whimpers of fear his actions draw out. Zola chuckles as he positions himself between the man’s legs with the funnel. He passes an admiring hand slowly down Bruce’s arm.

“You are a magnificent creature, Mister Banner.”

_‘You’re such a good boy, Bruce.’_

 

* * *

 

 

The man dies in the middle of a gurgled plea.

 Zola laughs.

 Bruce leaves.

There are cries coming from Father Ross’ office, the door opened enough that the light shines through into the darkened hallway Bruce has to pass through to get back to his room (he never goes to his friends after Zola’s, force and death on his hands. Never). He takes a deep breath, pushes himself as close to the wall as he can get, and moves with slow, cautious steps. Just a few seconds in the light, just a few seconds, he won’t be caught-

_“Father!”_

He looks up.

Between the door and the frame, he sees Sister Betty bent over the large mahogany desk in the center of the main office, habit on the floor, long black tresses loose around her. Father Ross stands behind her, thick hands holding the skirt of her robe around her waist, grunting loudly as he fucks into her with brutal thrusts that shake the desk she tries to hold onto. There are tears in Sister Betty’s eyes, but her face is skewed in nothing but hopeful pleasure as she cranes her neck to look at the man inside of her.

“ _Please_ ,” she whines. “Please. Father, Father, Father, Father-.”

He wraps an arm around her hips and violently jerks her upright, one hand pulling her hair until her neck is painfully arched, his other dropping from her hips to push beneath her robes to fondle her.

“Do you like that?” He growls as she cries out at a higher pitch. “Do you? Are you Father’s naughty girl, Betty? Are you? Are you?” He punctuates the questions with harder thrusts. “Be Father’s bad girl all night? Will you? Will you do that for your father?”

She sobs on his cock and he lets her fall back, keep his hand inside of her as he picks up a faster pace, “Betty, Betty, Betty, Betty, Betty-.”

Bruce darts away on light feet, nausea twisting at his stomach.

This place.

 

* * *

 

 

Breakfast is a quiet affair.

Steve’s managed to convince Father Ross to allow Bucky to eat his meal outside under Steve’s supervision, arguing that sunlight and grass could quiet his agitated manner, make him more receptive to treatment. Clint is locked in his room, banned from meals for the next three days, punishment for being caught smoking (of all things). Natasha is folded in on herself, nibbling just enough at her oatmeal to avoid Sister Betty’s reprimand, feet kicking out just enough to be in constant contact with his, anchored. Tony, too, is oddly silent, sitting next to Natasha with a seat between them, his tray untouched, staring directly at him, shredding him apart and exposing him with nothing more than a look.

_I know!,_ Bruce wants to yell. _I know! I know what I do! I’m a monster! I know!_

_Death would be too kind for me._

He says nothing. Tony receives a lash across his shoulders for wasting food that doesn’t even make him flinch. At least he’s wearing normal clothes today.

“What is your deal, Banner?” He asks when they’re back in the common area. Clint joins them with slow steps, escorted by an attendant who abandons him just as quickly. Bruce sighs as the younger man carefully sits beside him, cuddling close with a shiver and the familiar look of hunger in his eyes. “Is this some sort of game you play?”

“I haven’t played games in a very, very long time, Tony,” he murmurs, cards his fingers carefully over Clint’s blonde head as Natasha nudges their puzzle box toward him.

“Just deals, then.”

His head snaps up at the words, but Tony isn’t looking at him anymore. Instead his eyes are drifting from Clint to Natasha to the window under which Steve and Bucky are probably lounging. There’s that expression on his face again, the expression that melts away Bruce’s anger and flips his stomach.

“Damn. It _is_ easy to forget in here,” he whispers, but before Bruce can inquire, Sister Betty appears in the doorway, something fragile in her eyes that drops the flipping in his stomach like lead. She stares at him, lips pursed thin. He hasn’t done anything, he hasn’t done anything-.

“Stark!” She barks, slightly hysteric, the room instantly silent. For his part, Tony doesn’t jump, simply turns to her with a lazy roll of his head as she holds up her large set of keys.

Keys. Tony was out of his room last night, and she was holding up keys. _Son of a bitch-_

Clint tenses at his side as a heavy-set attendant appears from behind the nun’s back, reaching out and dragging Tony to his feet. He stumbles backwards, hard, falling into Bruce’s lap for the second it takes the attendant to grab hold again. He tosses a wink over his shoulder as they pull him from the room, the door slamming shut behind them.

After a few seconds of silence, Natasha’s foot hits his ankle, and he looks down at his lap, for some reason not surprised to see the gleam of the bruised green apple sitting there.

Clint makes a choked noise when Bruce passes it to him without looking.

What is this?

 

* * *

 

_Make it up to me, Bruce._

_Apologize for what you’ve done._

_God won’t forgive you, but I will._

 

* * *

 

 

Bruce doesn’t know Tony Stark.

He holds Sister Betty against the wall of his room, slams his cock into the tightness of her slick, engulfing heat over and over again. Her nails bite into his skin as she struggles to keep hold, whimpering into his neck with sickening pleasure and tiny desperate chants of _yesyesyes_ licked into veins. She clings to him him like she _owns_ him, and he’s not good enough not to let her. He lets the feel of her cunt smooth across his cock in tantalizing drags, feels his body roaring to the warmth of climax he’s not allowed to have. Not tonight. He pistons harder, angling so that his pelvic bone is hitting her clit, and she screams into his body as she orgasms, sucking around him as he pulls out, aching and hard and not wanting the satisfaction she thinks he does.

“Thank you, Sister Betty,” he whispers as they separate. She smiles at him, as she always does, her hand soft against his cheek as she straightens her robe.

“You’re learning, Bruce,” she assures him, pulling away. “By five,” she reminds, and disappears through his door.

He pulls on his pants, leaves the room, and goes the other direction.

Solitary is on the top floor, and the steps are less tiring than the two flights that lead to the basement.

He doesn’t know Tony Stark.

He can hear the faintest sounds of shrieks through the walls, the call of the outside he tries to avoid acknowledging, born from the path he walks after his meetings with Zola, carrying buckets of blood and pieces left over from experiments that were never destined for anything more than failure.

_I’m a monster._

He pushes open the door at the top, stepping into the dead-ended corridor of five stained doors that had once been white.

Tony’s door, open and inviting, _pisses him the fuck off._ He surges in, catching the man by the collar of his thin white shirt and slamming him into the wall with a grunt from them both, pushing as close he can until their breaths are stolen from each other, noses almost brushing.

“I know why you’re here,” he snarls. “ _I know why you’re here_.”

“Is that so?” Tony, though he winces at the effort of talking, looks amused. “What about why you’re here, huh Bruce?” He juts his hips, purposefully grinding against the hard-on Bruce is still sporting. “Because of this? Do you want me to take care of this?”

His breath catches. His fingers uncurl from Tony’s shirt in a flash, stumbling back, almost falling before the other man catches him, eyes going soft as he helps him settle.

“Is it?” He whispers, trailing his fingers up Bruce’s arms and over his shoulders. “Is it what you want, Bruce? God, has anyone even asked you that before?” The fingers trail up his neck and to his face, smoothing over Sister Betty’s touch and pushing it away. “I bet they haven’t. Will you let me, Bruce?” He leans in closer. “Will you let me do this for you? Do you want me to? Tell me if you do. You have to tell me. I won’t otherwise. I won’t do that to you. Stop. Go. Your choice, Bruce.”

Bruce opens his mouth, intending to tell him to stop, to push him away, it’s not what he came up here for -

“ _Tony_.”

“Tell me, big guy. Tell me, tell me, tell me-.”

**_God._** “ _Please.”_

Tony’s hand slips under the waistband of his pants, wraps around his still hard cock and gives it an experimental tug that has him moaning. He backs him up against the door slowly, pressing into him until it’s impossible to move away, move forward – his thumb circles the head gently, brushing across the slit and _fuck,_ it’s not supposed _to feel good_.

“Oh, Bruce,” Tony whimpers. He sounds pained, but his hand is sure, tender in its strokes, and Bruce is already too far gone to ask why he’s upset. “It’s okay. It’s okay, Bruce. Jesus. It’s so obvious why I’m here now, looking at you. You’re so good, Bruce, too good. You’re breaking here. It’s crushing you, isn’t it? Shh, shh.” He twists his wrist, fingers swiping at his leaking precum, adding wetness to his steady pumping that burns in the soles of his feet. “I’ve got you. I’m here now. You’re going to be okay. This is all going to be okay, Bruce. I swear. There you go. There you go.” Bruce keens low in his throat as the embers lick their way up his legs and to his gut. “I’m going to make this right. No one’s going to hurt you again. Come on, beautiful. Come on. It’s okay. You can. You can.”

The cry that escapes Bruce’s mouth is gurgled, almost a sob as he spills in Tony’s hand, spitting out strings of release that have to be hitting the other man. But his hand keeps moving, slower now, more gentle, coaxing out his pleasure until his knees give out, until he collapses against Tony’s frame and they slide down the door and onto the floor, Tony’s hand still covering him, his free one brushing through Bruce’s curls.

“I’m here because Steve asked me for help,” he murmurs when Bruce has calmed enough to breathe, his harsh breaths no longer stabbing the night’s quiet with brutal rage.

_“What?”_

“I’ve known him and Bucky for years, not that Bucky can remember anymore.” The hand in his hair tightens minutely before relaxing, picking up its petting in apology. “They were military; my father met them at a weapons presentation. They became friends for whatever insane reason someone becomes friends with Howard Stark.” He snorts. “When someone outed Bucky, Steve was devastated at his commitment and infuriated that he didn’t Steve up, too. They had this “together forever” thing going on, you know? He joined the Church just to get in here, be with him again. But when he saw what they were doing, not just to Bucky but to _everyone,_ well … Steve’s Steve. He asked me for help. Not that he was expecting me to out myself and get in to do it, which he made exceedingly clear, but… well, technically I have enough reasons to be in a place like this. And I just … knew I had to be here.” He snorts again. “I just didn’t expect _you._ I mean, it makes all the sense in the world, but … not expected.”

There’s an ache in Bruce’s chest as he shakes his head. “You were wrong about that, what you said. I’m not a good man, Tony. I’m in here for a reason, a legitimate reason. And I do … I do bad things.”

“The blood,” Tony acknowledges, thumb caressing Bruce’s still-sensitive dick in a way that makes him shudder. “The sex. I can feel it on you, their fear, their deaths-.” He flinches. “-Your fear, your regret, your _anger._ It’s easy to forget here, who you are. But I see you, Bruce. You don’t want to hurt these people. You don’t want her body like she wants yours.”

“ _Tony-.”_

“They’re hurting you, Bruce. They took your guilt and they fed it and they’re hurting you. Hurting everyone.” There’s a brush of lips against his temple that makes his eyes burn. “I’ll stop it. I’ll help you.

It’s why I’m here.”

 

* * *

 

 

The day Natasha dies is the day Hell erupts from the basement to take over the Earth, and Bruce isn’t ready for it.

None of them are.

Beautiful redheaded wounded Natasha.

She doesn’t die on the table under Zola’s hands, and that’s her dignity. She doesn’t die from therapy, from beatings, or from starvation, and that’s her comfort. She doesn’t die a victim of Triskelion, despite the fate the state handed down to her.

The attendant’s knife that slides into her chest was intended for Clint, and that’s her victory.

 Her death is her victory.

Her blood is hot and flowing under Bruce’s hands as he tries to pressure her wound. Clint is _screaming_ from somewhere to the side, held back by Steve, who left Bucky too late to stop it – his cries are anguished, heartwrenching, but Bruce can still hear the sharp rasps of breath Natasha is trying to suck in over the fluid filling her lungs, swamping her throat. Crimson spills out in a stream from the corner of her mouth as her head falls to the side, and her eyes are locked on him, the piercing green just as alert as always, eyelids fluttering between open and closed.

“Natasha!” He shouts it loud, demanding. “Natasha! Stay with me. Stay with me, baby. We’ll get you help. Just _keep your eyes open_ -.”

**_“Natasha!”_** Clint screams, and her gaze flicks to him. **_“Nat, please!”_**

She smiles, white, bloody, _real._

And her chest stops moving.

Bruce has felt life slip from a person before, has held protesting bodies until the last breath escapes with a defeated, forlorn sigh. But this is different. Natasha’s body doesn’t struggle so much as relax, her last breath an inhale as though preparing for a dive into an abyss he can’t see. She doesn’t die so much as just … disappears under his hands.

He doesn’t scream – Clint is doing that enough for all of them, his sorrow buried into Steve’s uniform, hands twisted in the chain of his crucifix. He doesn’t rage when other attendants along with Father Ross burst into the room, doesn’t fight when the attendant who had stabbed the knife starts babbling immediately about how Natasha had tried to attack him, how he had been defending himself, how he hadn’t meant to kill her.

He doesn’t feel the hands under his arms that lift him away from her body, doesn’t hear the words they’re saying or that Father Ross is barking. What he does see, however, is Clint breaking away from Steve’s hold, him yanking out his contraband matches from his back pocket, lighting five in one harsh swipe before dropping them onto Natasha’s body. Sees her catch fire and Clint take swings at the men that rush to put the flames out, how Steve just stands back with tears of his own. By the time they get around Clint, the scent of burning flesh is overwhelming and her body under her clothes is engulfed.

Zola won’t be able to touch her.

 

* * *

 

_Did they look at you, when you did it?_

_Did they know it was you?_

_Did they plead for mercy before you killed them?_

 

* * *

 

 

He can’t touch Tony, is disgusted and ashamed of his own weakness in that he wants the other man to hold him.

He’s sitting at the damned table, because Father Ross wants to keep everything as normal as possible for the other patients, and Natasha’s foot isn’t knocking against his in her silent little checks. She’s not here.

Kicked from solitary to make room for Clint (who’s too drugged up to be any sort of danger, but they don’t care about that), Tony’s hours too late to stop Natasha’s death, hours too late to be of any help at all. Bruce wants to scream at him, wants to _hurt him_ , but his hands do nothing more than make fists and yearn to touch his body.

“I was committed to Triskelion for killing my parents.” Bucky’s outside again with Steve, not remembering who Natasha was but aware enough to know something is devastatingly wrong, so Bruce can say these things in the dead, flattened voice that he does. He stares at the notches in the table, counts each one his fiery, silent friend had carved with her fingernails. “They found my mother in the kitchen, her head bashed in so violently all you could see was collapsed bone and empty sockets because her eyes had _fallen back into her head._ My father … they found in his bed, fifteen deep stab wounds applied randomly to the chest and blunt-force trauma to the right temple from a hammer that came _after._ ”

“Did you do it?” Tony’s words are just as flat, but Bruce can feel his eyes on him.

“…I killed my father two hours and twenty-three minutes after he killed my mother. I held her first, until her body started to get cold, when I knew she wasn’t coming back. I was … I was so angry, _so angry._ I wanted him to hurt the way she had. I wanted him to hurt _more.”_ He swallows, thick and dry. “My mom … she was good. An honest-to-God Good person, Tony. She slipped away under my hands just like … just like Natasha-.”

“Hey.” Under the table, Tony’s hand finds his, wraps around it so tightly it hurts, _feels_ like something. “Hey, no. Don’t do that, Bruce. You couldn’t have stopped this. Natasha went out the way she wanted to, don’t take that from her. Alright?”

Bruce can’t breathe and Natasha can’t breathe and Clint doesn’t want to breathe and Bucky doesn’t know why he keeps breathing.. “It hurts. It _hurts_. God, worse than anything. It hurts it hurts it _hurts_.”

He doesn’t look up to see Tony’s jaw clench.

 

* * *

 

 

“It is a shame about your friend.” Zola’s words are simpered in his usual kind tone. There’s blood on the table, tiny flecks of something that no doubt came from the body that’s no longer there. “She was very pretty.”

Bruce says nothing, simply slides onto the table regardless of the mess and spreads his arms out to either side – they slide in the blood, cold and wet, and he doesn’t even flinch when Zola applies the restraints.

The doctor hovers over him, scalpel already slicing the thin cuts along his arms. The blood flows out as quickly as it always does, and the man makes his usual sounds of delight as he makes more.

“I would have liked to have examined her body. Unfortunately, Mr. Barton’s actions have prevented that.”

Again, Bruce says nothing. Zola baits, takes joy in the rise of passionate human emotion during his treatments and experiments. Bruce had learned long ago not to play the game.

Natasha’s pale, blood-spattered face flickers through his mind.

“Your other friend, however,” Zola continues, moving to the other side. “Mister Stark? I look forward to having him.”

 “He has a family,” Bruce sputters on reflex. His eyes move frantically, head held down by the leather strap across his forehead. “He’s deviant. You don’t like deviants.”

“A man in my position can no longer afford to be picky with his patients, Mister Banner,” Zola chuckles, the next slice cutting a little too deep. “Mister Stark’s father has given Father Ross, and by extension me, permission to do whatever is necessary to cure his son. Though I would have much preferred a woman, he will do just as well. Now, don’t move. I am very close to an artery-.”

 

* * *

 

 

_You’re such a good boy, Bruce._

_My darling, sweet baby boy._

_I’m so proud of you, do you know that?_

_I_ _’ll always love you, sweetheart._

 

* * *

 

 

Triskelion falls two nights after Natasha’s death, the night before Tony is supposed to go for Zola’s treatment; falls like Bruce’s father, Natasha’s attackers, Clint’s abusers. Falls like the justice Bucky deserves.

Sister Betty is straddling him and for the first time in five years Bruce is saying _no._

She’s injected him with something. He hadn’t been expecting that, absently wonders if she’s always carried something in the pocket of her uniform (because that’s all it is to her) on the chance that there would be a time he refused her. He’s _saying no_ , but his words are slurred from this drug, his arms heavy, his legs stuck, his body painfully aroused as she drags her wet cunt over and over him in delicious horrible friction.

“It’s okay, Bruce,” she’s crooning, hands traveling his skin touches that are supposed to be gentle and just hurt. It’s an echo of Tony’s words and it makes him sick. “It’s okay. I’m sorry. It’s okay. Just, just let me.”

The tip of his cock barely breeches her entrance before suddenly all he feels is air.

He looks up, all that he’s able to move, and his breath stops at the sight of Tony standing at the foot of his bed, Sister Betty’s neck wrapped tightly in his fingers. He looks different, dark in a way Bruce hasn’t seen before, eyes like steel as his fingers squeeze off the woman’s whimpers.

“You God-less pathetic excuse for a whore,” he snarls, low and hateful and _deadly_. “He said _no.”_

The sound of her neck breaking is wet, accompanied by a small shriek as she drops from his hold to crumple on the floor, and all Bruce can feel is relief.

The next second Tony is hovering over him, the iron gaze wiped away in place of concern, biting his lower lip as his hands flutter over Bruce’s body, not quite touching but not avoiding, and it’s so Tony that a tear slips hotly from his eye.

“Hey,” the other man murmurs. “Hey, beautiful. No. You’re okay. It’s okay now. We’re getting out of here, alright? I’m going to lift you up, is that okay? You’re a little too big for me to carry, though, so you’ll have to lean on me. Can you do that? I know you’re out of it, I’d kill her again if I could, but I need you to trust me on this right now, Bruce. Will you trust me?”

Trust him?

Who else could he trust in this place, if not him?

_“To-ny.”_ It breaks apart in his throat, slithers on his tongue. “ _’lease.”_

The warmth of the hands sliding under him are a blessing.

 

* * *

 

 

When they hit the main floor, Steve is standing over Father Ross and Bucky, coated in blood that isn’t his, stands solidly by his side. Clint lingers behind them, eyes still a little unfocused from the drugs still in his system.

“I think, Father Ross, that you’re a little confused on what a man of God should be.”

Bruce has never heard Steve like this, voice cold and unforgiving. Tony draws them to a stop just outside the doorway, grip firm around him, but body paused, content to wait this out.

“A man of God, Father Ross, embodies God’s teachings. He exudes patience, he exudes love, and he passes no judgment on those who come to him seeking help.

He does _not_ use his power for his own pleasure. He does not torture innocents in the name of the Lord, does not steal blessings to the Church to further his own goals, and he certainly does not partake in carnal pleasure with his own daughter.”

Sister Betty. _Shit._

“What is this place?” Bruce breathes. Tony’s grip tightens.

“According to your teachings,” Steve continues in the same cold tone. “It is the duty of the church and of us Godly men to expunge this planet of the unholy evil that walks up on it.” Bruce watches as he turns to Bucky, sees the heavy look they exchange before the latter pulls something from pocket and turns it over in Steve’s hand. He recognizes the gleam of silver as a gun. “Because I am a man of God, I will follow this duty.”

He aims and fires the weapon with a resounding _crack_ in the blink of an eye. In the next blink, Father Ross lays motionless on the ground, mouth agape, bullet hole piercing through his eye. The silence that resonates through the room is deafening.

“Angel of Death ain’t takin anyone from here tonight, that’s for damn sure,” Bucky mutters, and though Father Ross is dead (and Sister Betty, too), the sound of his voice is so overwhelming that Bruce tries step toward him. His legs are still uncooperative, however, and he stumbles hard in Tony’s grip. The movement attracts the attention of his friends, however, Steve darting forward to help catch him, gun forgotten, Bucky close behind.

“What’s wrong with him?” Their man of God demands, shifting him back into proper support.

“She drugged him. Sedative, I think. Mild. He’ll be fine, but I might need help carrying him-.”

“-How ya doin’, doc?” Bucky teases softly, bending into his line of sight. There’s still a haunted look in his eyes, a hollowness to his face, but there’s recognition there that Bruce hasn’t seen in _months._

“-put in a call to the police, they’ll get here quick and the patients’ll be taken care of-.”

“-Zola?”

“-obviously very taken care of, I don’t wear blood for helluva it-.”

“-grabbed the files from Ross’ office, I’ll get ‘em to Howard, but we gotta _go_ -.”

“-Clint, _get the fuck over here so help me-.”_

“’S’gon’on?” His head feels heavy, but Father Ross is bleeding dead on this floor and Sister Betty is twisted dead on his floor and he should probably be paying attention or doing something-.

There’s a soft, familiar press of lips to his temple and someone (Clint?) is grabbing hold of his free had.

“We’re leaving, beautiful. We’re leaving.”

 

* * *

 

 

Outside of the hospital, there is something strange about Tony's eyes.

Bruce presses close to him anyway.

The moonlight is very bright. He thinks Natasha would have liked it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was actually going to take off with this, but it was growing too fast for me to justify it in less than 10,000 words. I had to take a lot out. No Angel of Death Darcy for you guys. Oops. (Seriously, you all should live inside my brain and see what it gave birth to for this part. Talk about massive babies).

**Author's Note:**

> I joined Twitter. @CrumblingAsh . I have no idea what I'm doing. You all should follow me so I can learn the art of hashtags and Tweeting and talk about writing and fandom and what-the-else ever.
> 
> I don't use a beta for reasons (dumb reasons). If something looks horrific or the tiny errors are inundating the work, lemme know and I'll snap it into shape. (:


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